


strange birds

by Nautica_Dawn



Series: dynasty of storms [4]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Dissociation, Gen, Mental Instability, POV Second Person, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-03-28 03:59:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13895778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nautica_Dawn/pseuds/Nautica_Dawn
Summary: Once upon a time, there was a boy who mastered the wind.





	strange birds

 

.

.

.

 

 

            You wake up. The world is blurry, then black as your eyes slide closed again. It’s too bright, to _alive_.

            Why does that bother you? Eyes closed, you breathe in. The air is always comforting. It carries with it the musky-sweaty-saltwater scent of Sokka and the all the messiness of a campsite. It fills your lungs, presses against your skin and tells you in no uncertain terms that you are alive and currently beneath a heavy fur blanket.

            You notice now that the air is lacking something. Three things, to be exact. The smoky spice of your firebending master, the long breaths the older boy takes when he’s relaxed. The sweet scent of dirt after rain that is your swamp girl and the short sharp breath of her small lungs.

            And most importantly, there is not the coy freshwater of your forever girl, nor the gentle tones of her voice on the wind because she is always, always speaking or humming and why is there no noise beyond the backdrop of the camp and her brother’s tension filling the tent?

            Your eyes open all the way now. You try to sit up, but pain is blooming everywhere. It dances across your skin, swimming just beneath it in the same swirling patterns of a river eddy.

            “Careful there.” Soft, female— _Kata—_ no, not right. This is the residual tang of clay and the sharp slice of cold steel. Suki. Suki is pushing you back down, wrong blue eyes filled with concern when you finally look at her. “You’re still pretty beat up.”

            You can’t speak. You try, the parched earth that is your throat cracking open to the point you think blood may rush out instead of words. Suki holds a cooled cup in her hands. Her hand is steady behind your head, helping you tilt up enough you won’t choke as the medicine washes down.

            A sedative, you realize too late.

            _She should have just let you choke_ , a voice whispers just before the dark swallows you whole.

 

.

 

             The next time you wake, it is to night. You always know night. There is a special wind after sunset—not quite chilly and slower than her daylight brother. You blink once, twice, then realize you are not alone. It doesn’t hurt to turn your head and you see Sokka in a chair. His breathing is too harsh to be anything but awake.

            You won’t try sitting up again. But you can speak, you think. Your throat is almost dewy with the night air curling water down past your tongue. “Sokka?”

            “I’m here.” There’s a soft grunt and you can almost hear the sound of his joints cracking. How long has it been since the boy moved?

            “What happened?”

            Tension contaminates the wind in ways you didn’t think possible. Sokka’s breathing changes, his scent twisting in a way that suggests anger. Yes, anger. What happened, you think. What happened, you want to say again. You want to know why you can’t find your three masters, the three friends you need. You want to know why you don’t remember how the pain came to fill in lines of your body you didn’t know you had.

            Sokka breathes out and you can’t decide if there should be ice or fire off his tongue for all the pent up emotion that comes out with it. You expect him to tell you to go back to sleep, but he doesn’t.

            All he says is: “You lost.”

 

.

 

            You wake again to morning.

            Sokka is gone.

            Suki sees you are awake and smiles so very sadly.

            You want to ask why.

            But before you can, she begins to speak.

 

.

 

            You wake again and it is different. The sunlight streams in and you are surrounded by the bouncing happiness of your brothers. Sitting up, you find Dasan at the foot of your bed. His teeth are so white against the dark of his skin, eyes grey like storm clouds. He is bigger and older than you, but likes you because the bison like you almost as much as they like him.

            “Get up, little lemur.” He presses a warm hand against your head. “It’s time for the migration.”

            The migration! Oh how you’ve been looking forward to this. All the birds heading south for the Antarctic summer, passing over Jongmu so thickly they blot out the sun—Dasan has told you stories, promised to show you the best viewing spot when the time came.

            You’re out of bed before he can say another word.

 

.

 

            You’re being pushed back down. Pain flares, lightning beneath your skin and oh spirits lightning—the lightning in Wulong and Ozai and the airships—

 

.

 

            You slip on a stair and Dasan catches you before you can catch yourself on the air. You think it’s silly, the way he’s so grounded. The other monks don’t approve of it. There are whispers of the sea all around Dasan, winding around him like the southern wind is the only wind he knows.

            You’ve heard people say Dasan is only kept around because the animals like him best.

            You think it’s secretly because this non-Master brother of theirs is so very grounded. He’s brotherly love made human. That’s a good thing isn’t it?

            And then they’re atop the highest spire of the temple complex and the view just takes—

 

.

 

            You can’t breathe. The words are filling up the air taking everything all the light everything gone and gone and gonegone _gone_

 

.

 

            Dasan keeps candied ice flower petals on hand at all times. The lemurs love them and so too do you. The petals are sweet and something you can’t quite name against your tongue. It’s perfect for the bright of the sunlight and the rolling blue of the seas, the white of the clouds, and the ever-growing sound of wings against wind—

 

. 

 

            spirits, is that your heart? It can’t be good, beating that strong. There must be something wrong where the blazes is

 

.

 

            smoke on the wind it’s all you can think of gold eyes staring down at you when did sifu get so _old_ so fast so that’s not sifu this isn’t right this isn’t real

 

.

 

            this isn’t real

 

.

 

            The wind is a river. It carries you through the clouds, the sky fading through so many colours as you float along. You remember Monk Gyatso once telling you that enlightenment was being the wind itself.

            You think you’ve finally reached that point.

            There is no ground but all around you can see everything. Colourful spirits swim alongside you, bodies shimmering in the muted golden light. You follow their path to the brightly coloured world where chi runs throughout the land.

            You look to the other side and see darkness creeping through the clouds, devouring everything in its path. You know you should go there. Balance is your nature because you are the Avatar. You are supposed to banish darkness, keep the worlds healthy.

            But you are still just a boy.

            And more, you are a Master Airbender.

            You turn away from the dark, and lazily spin towards the brightness of the vibrant world.

You do not look back.

 

.

 

            “This would be easier if you would wake up.” He settles beside you, serene and so perfectly in place in this world. You wonder why you haven’t noticed before how he keeps one foot in each world. You’re supposed to be able to do that. Should be that, all the time.

            You’re the bridge between worlds, right?

            That’s rather silly, though. Your body is so small. How can you possibly do anything about the growing canyon between this peaceful place and that ugly charred land?

            “I am awake.” And truly you are. You are more awake than ever before. You can see all the connections running through the spiritual plane even with your eyes closed.

            You can see all the lines, but no wind. This place has no trace of your blood, your flesh.

            And that, you think, is very wrong.

 

.

 

            She is serene beside you, the first breath of fresh air in what feels like an eternity. You open your eyes, not turning to face her. You remember her well. Of course you do. Her face is your face. Was your face, lifetimes ago.

            “Why can’t I find them?”

            “Now is not the time.” She is always so serious. The voice of reason, she is. Will be for all lifetimes to come, perhaps. “You are looking for the wrong souls, little lemur.”

            _Little lemur_ , says Dasan and Gyatso and all your brothers and sisters. The ghost of them is here, in her, but you cannot see them.

            You do not like this.

            “Then when?” You keep your focus on the horizon, as if you can will the children of the wind to rise up over the berry forest.

            But the air stays still.

 

.

 

            Wulong is in shambles. Stone trees are everywhere, the red of the dust still in the air making it seem like the comet never left. All around you are ruins of airships—great skeletons jutting up, demons springing up from a dying earth.

            If you look closely, you can see the shades of White Lotus members around you. They pick through the dust and wreckage, searching for something.

            No, someone. They are looking for someone.

            Aren’t you all?

 

.

 

            Sister Isi is as pretty as the gentle light of morning and as sweet as dawn’s wind too. She is five or so autumns your senior and you do your best to ignore the way her demure smile is accompanied by a gentle blush and downturned eyes when Dasan is around. Because really, she is so pretty and you find yourself wishing she would smile at you like that.

            You’re not entirely sure what it means. You know it’s wrong, though. It’s an earthly attachment. It makes your heart do weird things and your head feel like you’ve flown far too high.

            But still you cannot stop yourself from being so happy when she finally looks at you and smiles.

 

.

 

            You see the sword before anyone else. Black like night, the sunlight reflects constellations across the surface. It sticks up from the ground amid an ugly turn of rubble. The area around it clear, though, as if protected by some spirit.

            You get closer and think the light of it looks more like moonlight than sunlight.

            But that cannot be. The Moon no longer resides in the spirit world.

 

.

 

            Isi beckons you closer, smiling so sweetly. The Eastern Temple must be the most beautiful of them all if they produced her—

 

.

 

            —he slips and Dasan catches him again really that airbender is an odd turtleduck but then he turns and Dasan isn’t Dasan it’s—

 

.

 

            “Little lemur,” and it’s so lovely to hear her say it but it still cuts like a knife because you have your arrows you’re not a child anymore how can she see you as a child—

 

.

 

            “Careful there, Aang.” Dasan becomes Sokka becomes Dasan. In certain light you see one brother and then it’s the other. You’ve never noticed how much the two looked like.

            Hakoda too, you think.

 

.

 

            Isi in the moonlight is even better. You rethink your previous assessment that she is the serenity of morning made human. Not even a Water Tribe girl could be this ethereal by moonlight.

            You’ve gotten up just to check on Appa. You don’t like leaving the bison alone for too long and he doesn’t like be separated from you. Dasan says that’ll change as you and Appa get older, but for now separation is hard.

            And speaking of Dasan, there he is. What are he and Isi even doing up this late? Why are they standing so close? Whywhywhy does this _hurt_?

 

.

 

            You follow the out of place moonlight because it is the only thing that feels real in this terrible ruined place. Away from the wreckage of twisting metal and towards a crumbled stone tree you find something fluffy and almost white sticking out. When you pull it free of the dust, it reveals a tangled mess of green and cream you know is a southern Earth Kingdom hairpiece.

            You just don’t know how you know that.

 

.

 

            Bumi is the first to spot how quiet you are. “You’re just a boy, what were you expecting? To be a monk without any effort?”

            You don’t know how to explain to this Earth Kingdom prince the intricacies of your people but _yes_ you are supposed to be a good pious monk without effort because you’ve been raised to be that since your mother gave you up to the Southern Air Temple for training.

            “But if you’re all monks, then who are your dads?”

            You have no idea what he’s talking about. Mad prince, he is, so you suggest riding the mail chutes again.

           

.

 

            And then the moonlight leads you to something small and dirty and very, very blue.

 

.

 

           They send you east to choose your bison, and they talk of sending you east again. There are toys in front of you and you choose four.

            They call you Avatar.

            You want to choose different toys.

 

.

 

            Dasan does not answer when you call. Sokka tends to the black moon sword, but does not look when you approach. He flicks his wrist  _go away_. There is no wind. There is never wind.

            You cannot remember when you last saw Dasan.

            You cannot remember when you last went home.

            All you want is to go home.

 

.

 

            There is man in the Eastern Air Temple. Wrong, wrong, all wrong. Nothing’s right at all. There is a man in the Eastern Air Temple, and Appa is the only bison.

            You find the gardens Sister Isi loved the most. It’s all wrong, wrong, wrongwrong _wrong_. Weeds shoot up, twisting, turning.

            Isi wouldn’t allow this.

            You can’t find Sister Isi.

            You can’t find anyone. You look and look and look. You look until your feet hurt, until your voice is all clawed out from calling the names etched along your limbs. There is no answer. There is never any answer.

             _They’re all gone, Avatar Aang_ , the man in the Eastern Air Temple tells you.  _Remember the war_.

 

.

 

            You want to choose different toys.

 

.

 

            It shimmers gold and holy, the river beneath the world. Swirls of light amid the dark, you can trace the edges as you float on by, watch bubbles spit out life again, again.  

            Monk Gyatso told you stories. Dasan told you a few more. Their voices echo, and you look but never find them. Always the next river bend, always behind the next cloud. You look for the sisters who loved you like a son, for the brothers who raised you as their own. You look for the bison. You look for anything, everything, and wonder where your world has gone.

            You have the stardust river. You have the berry bright forest. You have the burnt bronze hills. You have the garden of eternal mists. You have the darkness creeping in that whispers loss and anger, pain and death.

            But you do not have your world.

            You do not have the tarts, the games, the humming prayers that echo in your bones, put a rattle in your ribs. You do not have your bed in your room, the boys who slept in the beds spread out around yours. You do not have the lemurs, the bison rolling through the skies. You do not have the laughter, the joy.

 

.

 

            You do not have your forever girl. You do not have your swamp girl. You do not have your firebending master and this is just another thing the blood red sky has taken from you.

            The sky is yours but the sky has betrayed you. The star that swung too close, a world reduced to ash. First your people, then again your people.

            You find Sokka in the Eastern Air Temple. It hurts your teeth to look at him. He is Dasan and not Dasan. Sokka, you remember. He is Sokka, not Dasan. There is no wind in him, nor water, nor any element. He is just Sokka, who looks at you and all you see is forever burning down.

 

.

 

            Days bleed into weeks into months into years that press you down into the earth. You float above the golden river, you fly through dreams, but the sky does not answer when you call upon waking.

 

            Another bison lands and it aches your lungs to feel the air shift just so. A bison lands and another nomad wanders the Eastern Temple. Everything feels too close, now. The people, the camp, the _fire_. Harmless, weak, a campfire but it burns and burns.

            They told him fire took his people, took his world. Echoes of it rage in the beyond. A spark of cycles turning creaks in screams and agony. But here it is: a Nomad and a bison are in the Eastern Temple. He sees the shadow disappear into the sky, sees the Guru approach from the stables. He feels Appa’s mournful cry rattle in his ribs.

            _Don’t leave me_. _Not again_.

            “Is everything all right, Avatar?” the Guru asks, and shakes his head when you tell him you’re not the last. “No, I’m sorry, but you must have seen a bird. I think it’s time you rest.”

 

.

 

            You know the difference between bison and birds. Dasan once—

 

.

 

            “They’re strange birds, the bison are,” Dasan says, and leans back into the wind. You wish you had that ease, that careful sloth that comes with age. “Fur instead of wings, but they fly as well as the wind.”

            “What?” You say, and there is laughter in your breath. “They aren’t—”

.

 

            “—birds, Aang.” And it’s wrong, wrong, so wrong, but that’s Suki leaning in towards him, and she looks concerned with the wrong blue eyes that should be grey, no blue, no grey. You can’t decide. “Are you okay?”

            “I’m fine,” you say. “Honestly.”

 

.

 

            “Please don’t lie to me, Aang,” she says. Sister Isi kneels down and it kills you just a little because she’s so pretty but so far when she’s standing that she has to kneel to actually see you. “Now let me see.”

             Her hands are cold on your arm, the dirt beneath her nails sweet feeling even though you know it’s wrong. All wrong. Just like the thing that burned your arm.

            “It was just an accident,” you say, and pray she does not ask.

            Sister Isi smiles but it’s a confused thing because you are Nomads and peace is your only way, the wind your only home. “I’m sure it was, but where did it happen? We only keep fires in the kitchen, this time of year.”

 

.

 

            The lie is this: you knew. You knew before the storm, before the toys, _before_.

            You knew when you couldn’t sleep, those early nights after Master Po took you away. You knew when you missed your mother keen betwixt the ribs, when you tried to think of your father and only thought of fire adorning hands not unlike your own.

            You felt the heat in your hands, and opened your eyes to find the thought made real.

            It was the first the gold river sang out, and in your bones, you knew.

 

.

 

            The lie is this: you knew.

 

.

 

           You knew the wind was there, you knew the children still flew, you knew the moon still lived, the three still breathed. You knew before the toys, before the storm, _before_.

 

.

 

           You’ve always known.

 

.

 

            _You’re looking for the wrong souls_ , she said. You didn’t think of it then and you still don’t think of it now but you also do. You think of it because you can’t tell which souls she means.

            No, you do. You do but you don’t want to. You deny and deny and maybe if you deny again it will be true.

            You want Gyatso, and Dasan and Isi and the rest. You want the lemurs you knew the birds that darkened the sun, you want the bison Appa was born with.

            You’re tired, and you want to go home.

 

.

 

            Day in, day out, you slip between the dark and the painful bright. You wander the shrouded garden and climb the bronzed hills. You see the fettered spirits and ask about their day.

            _If upholding power requires its abuse, then the power, bruised and unsightly, must be set free so that it may begin to heal_ , they say, and you know you have heard those words before but for once you cannot place them. You know they are talking about you, about the power in your deepest heart, but you never wanted that power anyway and so you float on by.

            When you wake, you think you wake, and the man who doesn’t belong does not smile.

 

.

 

            Just make it stop. Please no more war. No more war. You can’t do this anymore. Breaths bleed and you feel the ice closing in even in the heavy summer. You haven’t left the Eastern Air Temple in so long you can’t be sure any time has passed at all.

 

.

 

            No, you left once.

            Maybe.

            You don’t remember.

            Honestly.

 

.

 

            But this time you do leave. The man who doesn’t belong looks worried, but there’s chatter of lines spread too thin and supplies running too low. So to Taku you fly.

 

.

 

            “Do you want a story?” Sister Isi says, and it’s your first night away from Jongmu and you can’t sleep for fear of the unknown.

            You can’t sleep, because you know you’ve done this before and you can’t find an explanation for how you know where everything is in this place with your eyes closed.

            “Please,” you say, and she tucks you in and starts.

            “Once upon a time—

 

.

 

            Once upon a time, there was a boy who mastered the wind.

            He took his arrows and was brought before the monks and told to choose four toys, and thus declared Avatar and you know this story. You know it too well, can see it play out again and again and sometimes it’s not a boy but a girl and then a boy again and you’re not really sure which story this is but it feels familiar enough you finish it.

            Once upon a time, there was a boy who mastered the wind, and was trapped in an iceberg for a hundred long years. And when he woke, it was to a face so familiar and so foreign it hurt and something rang out inside you that said she is you but you aren’t her and this is all wrong.

            The boy who mastered the wind and was trapped was freed, because of course he was. But war raged, because it always does because that’s what wars do best. The boy and the girl he should have been travelled and became masters, became heroes, maybe legends.

            And then the world burned once again, and the girl he should have been was lost just as you lost your forever girl that you should have been. You know this story, and you don’t, because you are the boy but you aren’t.

            You love her but you don’t. You want to crawl into her skin because maybe that will fix it and you wonder if the boy who mastered the wind felt the same. Was it the same intense _she is mine_ _she is me_?

            The boy who mastered the wind found the girl he should have been again, later, with the boy who caught the fire and they are so close you just want to dissolve between them and end. Maybe that would put things to right. Maybe, but that’s not this story. This story is the boy who mastered the wind, and his anger in his grief and how it blinded him and made the spirit in him rage because she is you and there is physical pain in long-forgotten caves of what may have a heart.

            You’d forgotten this, just as the boy who mastered the wind did. The forever girl forever hurts you, because she is you but you aren’t her and you can always feel that tiny bit of you that escaped when you slept too long. It’s a reminder that this is not your story, and the boy who mastered the wind flies away, away, fights the moon and flies again to where he can’t feel that missing pieces. But still it’s there and it mocks and mocks because this is not your world.

 

.

 

            This is the lie: you knew. When you woke, you knew. This is not your world because your world burned while you slept.

 

.

 

            It feels like peace, a little, finally, standing in the dead stone forest with the girl you should have been. She’s beautiful, you think, again. You’re beautiful. Or would have been, but you slept too long and so you stand here and you also stand there but also don’t. There’s a tiny piece of you, that dark in the light, that sings out of her and beckons you closer, always closer.

            Once upon a time, the boy who mastered the wind stood in this same forest with the girl he was meant to be and had a conversation about the years they’ve been apart, and he gives her back a tiny thing that’s very, very blue and live happily ever after. Or don’t.

            You know this story, and you think it’s ending.

 

.

 

            “What comes next?”

 

.

 

            What does come next? Her, supposed to be. She tells you the war is over and you feel that last bit of your world slip beyond your grasp. You are not the last, but you also are, she says, and the world has finally moved on.

            So what comes next?

 

.

 

            “I want to go home.”

 

.

 

            The girl you should have been, the girl you will forever want. She’s so close you can breathe her breath and you wonder what it would be like to breathe with her lungs and see with her eyes.

            But you slept too long and the world did not stop spinning.

 

.

 

            “Okay then.”

 

.

 

            And so you go.

**Author's Note:**

> HELLO EVERYONE I AM BACK!
> 
> So, yeah. Here's that Aang-centric I've been talking about for what, five years now? Updates on this are going to be slow, and there are only three parts. Reason 1 is that this story is mentally and emotionally draining to work on and it's only going to get worse given how heavy some of the subject matter can be. Reason 2 is that simply that this fic is spoilers galore from here on out. To avoid that, part two cannot come out until after the conclusion of Korra's arc and part three cannot come out until 'twilight of the gods' is pretty much over. Which, I know it's been a while, but 'twilight' is the final conclusion of this series set one Harmonic Convergence after Korra. Updates will be slow indeed. 
> 
> And yes, this does quote 'world' at the end.
> 
> In the meantime, I am currently working on the next chapter of 'game'. I promise. I'm reworking this last half of the story because I lost a lot of my drafts for this series last year. You may have heard of severe flooding occurring in parts of the US last year, and my home was hit by one of them. Everyone is okay and the house is finally more or less back to normal, so things are starting to settle down which means I have time to write again.


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